Take another look

In the past, I have concentrated on the blindness that we can have and requested you ask yourself questions to move out of any blindness that may be hindering you in your surroundings.

This week I would like to take this a step further and look at this item called Peripheral Vision.

Sometimes we can be convinced we see the whole picture but is that all there is to the equation? In reality this Peripheral Vision would be “having the capacity to see side or fringe areas when one is looking around”. Sportspeople in all types of sport, especially team sports are said to excel when they have good peripheral vision. There are actually sports coaches around that specialize in expanding people’s peripheral vision.

Now if it applies on the sports field, then it applies elsewhere as well. What is happening around you that you are missing that could help you in your quest to live a great life, even if your life is great. Is there anything that you are missing due to your own internal ideas that cloud what is happening in the “true” view?

Now I ask this, not to say that your view isn’t the real view of the world but as a way of helping you decipher issues that occur around your life. I say “true” knowing full well that what is true for you is true.

We have all met people who have a different viewpoint to us… you know, you look at them and shake your head at their lack of understanding and their complete disregard to what you have to say. No matter how much we are able to disassociate ourselves from the conflict, the disbelief at their ignorance and arrogance leaves an indelible print. You can recall a few examples now.

These people do not have a huge peripheral vision; you could almost call it tunnel vision

But that is them and quite frankly, we can’t do much to change that. We can however, increase our view to take in all that we need to expand towards our dreams of just how life should be! This isn’t about accepting others point of view though, it’s about expanding on what we see, to make our life as palatable as totally possible.

Now if we are to look at this peripheral vision how would we start…?

You can take any event you would like, be it sporting, musical, a TV program, anything that you get an overview of while watching.

Take a sporting event. You watch this event from the comfort of your lounge room on TV, you can see the whole picture, both teams striving for a win. You can see all that’s happening on the field. In other words you have a vision that stretches to the outer boundaries of the game. Now the player playing this game is absorbed in the close contact and hand to hand combat of this event. Suddenly he does something like throws the ball to nobody and you ask the question… Why on earth did he do that?

You see, you could see there was no point, he couldn’t. You had the advantage of seeing so much more than he could.

So if we were to take this event and apply it to your life… you know, you could sit on the couch and enjoy the contest. What more would you see than you are seeing right now? Would it help? Would you change anything?

There are examples of this all around. There are the “pick the differences” puzzles, two similar pictures but one has subtle changes. When we first look, they both look the same, but on closer inspection, there are differences that, once seen, are so damn obvious, we wonder how we never saw them.

There are many ways we can improve our peripheral vision. Just being aware and being in the present… you know, concentrating on what you are doing, can bring about a greater vision of the scene, but, just being aware that there could be more to it, usually is quite sufficient to bring about a greater vision of what is happening in the here and now.

If you think you know it all, there is probably not much chance that you will see more, but if you are prepared to ask yourself, “Is there more?” then you open the door to opportunity and answers to what is around you.

As we go about our life, it’s amazing how much faith we put in to how much we see. Driving a car can bring about a different view when we consider that there may be more to what we are seeing. How many times have you got to where you were going and had that thought…? “What on earth, did I do back there?”

Even if you were pretty aware of it… what did you miss?

All these questions ask you to step up to the next level, for you. This isn’t a competition against others, this is about you and being more capable of grabbing the opportunities that you are passing every day and then at night you are saying to yourself… “If only, this would happen and then my life would be different” What I am saying, is that it may have happened and you missed it due to your concentrating on other things?

Life has a funny way of giving you what you ask for, but I have seen so many examples of people declining an advantage and then saying good things don’t happen to them. You know the example well… a friend rings and says, “I just want to give you this” and you say, “I couldn’t possibly accept that”…

What chance do you have, when you keep turning the good stuff down?

In Life, we attract stuff… most of the time we “think” that most of the “stuff” is bad… but we fail to consider the amount of good stuff we turn down. This is all about looking a bit further than normal. We turn things down and say we don’t deserve it. Yet we have spent time wishing for good things to happen.

Let’s get something straight. Part of living and wishing good stuff to happen, is to accept it when it does. Open up a little and accept it. You have worked for this to happen, so let it!

This is all to do with things happening around the peripheral of you! Your vision and your life revolve around what happens. While we stick to the tried and true, we find that things pretty well stay as they have been. The question I ask, is, what about all the extra stuff? When are you going to let the good stuff come in and you accept it.

Too many times, too many people decline to accept the good stuff, as if they have never seen it. Well this is a blindness that will curtail your life. For once, you could say, I have worked for this and I deserve this… If you did, what position would that put you in?

Next time, think about this. Don’t say “I could never accept this? It came to you. What right do you have to not accept it? Isn’t this something you have been wishing for?

The next step in all this is to ask yourself a question. It doesn’t really matter what the question is, as long as you start to increase your vision around you and start towards being more accepting of all that is happening. Finding out, can be so much of an eye opener and a great way of extending your view further into your surroundings.

Until next week

Cheers…. Bill

Bill Gray

Bill is a Business Coach. Working with Individuals, Businesses and Organisations to create better environments and to develop and enhance business ”potential”, into successful business practices.